We use data from an IRB approved online experiment conducted on the Volunteer Science platform [1]} in which 145 individuals in 29 human-only teams of five solved a Hidden Profile task. The task is framed as a crime investigation: the team needs to pool clues to answer questions about the target, culprit, and time of an art heist. There are six clues for each question. When combined, the correct answer out of five possible options (framed as “lion gang”, “snake gang” etc.), is obvious. One randomly selected clue is given to every teammate (the public clue) and each individual receives one of the remaining five clues (the private clue, also randomly selected). Teams were randomly assigned to a communication topology using all 21 possible connected five node graphs (e.g., star, ring, chain; see Fig. REF a for one example). Teams then communicate via text-based chat where each message is sent to all neighboring teammates. After a five minute discussion phase, each individual submits answers for the culprit's identity, the target, and day of the art heist. Subjects were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk [2]} and paid a $0.75 flat fee for participation as well as a $0.25 performance bonus for each correct answer. The entire task took about seven minutes to complete. Subjects are blind to the network topology they have been assigned to as well as the total number of individuals on their team. For simplicity of exposition and analysis, we rely only on the culprit dimension of the task. We compute individual performance as \(\lbrace 0, 1\rbrace \)  depending on whether the culprit guess is correct and team performance as the average individual performance (majority voting does not substantively change results). On average, individuals received \(3.1\)  (SD \(1.9\) ) chat messages from each partner.
